The ensuing section of the work opens with some general observations on the scenery of that now noted district of the south of Scotland, blended with the graceful expression of those melancholy remembrances, we doubt not deeply felt, which must ever cast a dark shadow over the minds of the surviving associates of the Great Minstrel. Alas! where can we turn ourselves without being reminded of the transitory nature of this our low estate, of its dissevered ties, its buried hopes, and lost affections! How many bitter endurances, reflected from the bosom of the past, are ever mingling with all those ongoings of human life and action which we call enjoyments! How mixed in their effects are even the natural glories of this our fair creation! What golden sunset casts not its far-beaming splendour, not only on the great mountains and the glittering sea, but also breaks, as if in mockery, into ghastly chambers where the desolation of death, "the wages of sin," is miserably brooding! And yet how solemnizing, how elevating in their influences, are all the highest beauties both of art and nature, notwithstanding the awe, approaching to fearfulness, with which they not seldom affect our spirits. The veneration with which we gaze even on insensate walls which once formed the loved abode of genius and virtue, is a natural tribute to a noble nature, and flows from one of the purest and most sustaining sources of emotion by which our humanity is distinguished. It almost looks as if, in accordance with the Platonic philosophy, there remained to man, from an original and more lofty state of existence, some dim remembrance of perfection. "This inborn and implanted recollection of the godlike," says Schlegel, "remains ever dark and mysterious; for man is surrounded by the sensible world, which being in itself changeable and imperfect, encircles him with images of imperfection, changeableness, corruption, and error, and thus casts perpetual obscurity over that light which is within him. Wherever, in the sensible and natural world, he perceives any thing which bears a resemblance to the attributes of the God-head, which can serve as a symbol of a high perfection, the old recollections of his soul are awakened and refreshed. The love of the beautiful fills and animates the soul of the beholder with an awe and reverence which belong not to the beautiful itself--at least not to any sensible manifestation of it--but to that unseen original of which material beauty is the type. From this admiration, this new-awakened recollection, and this instantaneous inspiration, spring all higher knowledge and truth. These are not the product of cold, leisurely, and voluntary reflection, but occupy at once a station far superior to what either thought, or art, or speculation, can attain; and enter into our inmost souls with the power and presence of a gift from the divinity."